Fungal osteoclasia: a model of dead bone resorption

Towards and Understanding of the Microbial Decomposition of Archaeological Bone in the Burial Environment

“…The MFD in the fossil bone were smaller, 2-4 m in diameter. The authors (Marchiafava et al, 1974) suggested that the narrow tunnels in the fossil material were due to the confluence of smaller tunnels (i.e. 0·3-0·8 m in diameter), but this is not likely.…”

Bone quantity and quality in past populations

“…However, concerns for postmortem bone diagenesis must also be considered, and investigators such as Stout (1978) noted that methods like photon-absorptiometry may not be reliable due to poor bone preservation. The physical, chemical, and biological elements of the burial environment all contribute to bone diagenesis (Solomon and Haas, 1967;Race et al, 1968;Marchiafava et al, 1974;Hackett, 1981;White and Hannus, 1983;Von Endt and Ortner, 1984), and several investigators have cautioned that diagenetic effects can alter the accuracy of chemical and histological methods (Piepenbrink, 1986;Garland, 1987;Hancock et al, 1987Hancock et al, , 1989Hanson and Buikstra, 1987) and even create pseudopathological changes (Bell, 1990;Bell and Jones, 1991;Matt, 1993). Variation in the levels of bone mineralization or bone density may not be associated with vicissitudes of life but rather with postmortem circumstances that are undetectable with some experimental methods.…”

An Investigation Into the Relationship Between Funerary Treatment and Bacterial Bioerosion in European Archaeological Human Bone

“…Early theories regarding the aetiology of bacterial bone bioerosion were concerned with soil micro-organisms (Marchiafava et al 1974;Hackett 1981;Piepenbrink 1986Piepenbrink , 1989Hanson and Buikstra 1987;Yoshino et al 1991;Grupe and Dreses-Werringloer 1993). Successive studies have suggested that non-Wedl MFD are produced by a dead organism's gut bacteria (Child 1995a;Bell et al 1996;Jans et al 2004;Guarino et al 2006;Nielsen-Marsh et al 2007;Hollund et al 2012;White and Booth 2014).…”

“…Hackett (1981, 250) defined four categories of micro-foci of destruction (MFD) that constitute bioerosion. Inoculation experiments established that Wedl tunnelling is caused by saprophytic fungi (Marchiafava et al 1974;Fernández-Jalvo et al 2010) and similar experiments, combined with microscopic analyses of archaeological bone, determined that all three forms of non-Wedl MFD are produced by bacteria (Yoshino et al 1991;Balzer et al 1997;Grupe and Turban-Just 1998;Jackes et al 2001;Dixon et al 2008). Bacterial bioerosion is the predominant form of microbial attack observed within archaeological bone (Nielsen-Marsh and Hedges 2000; Hedges 2002;Jans et al 2004;Nielsen-Marsh et al 2007).…”